WKBW's Madison Carter's time has come: 'I want to be a newsroom leader'

Rarely has a story and a reporter aligned as perfectly as it did the night of May 30, when the WKBW-TV (Channel 7) reporter-anchor described what was happening as Western New Yorkers circled Niagara Square to protest the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.

Carter’s riveting 75-minute live shot – yes, 75 minutes – illustrated that she was someone to watch not only on that night but also in the future.

At a time when racial inequity and social injustice is being widely discussed, Carter’s controversial, outspoken voice about the need for diversity in local newsrooms also is perfectly timed.

Named for the book her mother was reading while pregnant, “The Bridges of Madison County,” Carter has quickly made a name for herself in two years in Western New York.

In a wide-ranging, interview, Carter discussed her family history, her determination to expand diversity in Buffalo media and her future.

Carter is a 24-year-old native of Virginia who was the president of her high school class, graduated from Syracuse University in less than three years and began her TV career at a Charlottesville, Va., station.

Her father, Tom, was a first-round draft choice of the Washington franchise in 1993 out of Notre Dame who played in the National Football League for a decade and now is director of player affairs for the NFL Players Association union. Her brother Alex played at Stanford and was a third-round NFL draft choice in 2015. Her sister Peyton plays Division I basketball at Davidson.

“I was in the shadow of the family,” Carter said of her high school years. “I was acting out, trying to get attention, wanting to be on the same level of the football players in the family.”

Her days in the shadows are over.

Carter has established herself as the president of the Buffalo Association of Black Journalists less than two years after coming here. She amusingly refers to herself as "President Carter."

As an advocate for more diversity in Buffalo media, Carter recently called a meeting with decision-makers for local TV stations and this newspaper.

“We’re in a moment where we are covering very serious issues of race … so let’s have a conversation,” she said of the meeting. “It was wonderful. We talked about how to recruit and retain journalists of color and about caring for black journalists because it is a very traumatic time."

After her May live shot, Carter noted in a tweet that she was the only person of color on live TV covering the protest for a local station. She acknowledges there has been a much-needed expansion in minority hiring on local TV, but she wanted to make a point.

“My tweet was all of us have done so much to bring talent of color to this market, and I didn’t see it in the moment where it counted the most,” she said.

She laughed when asked if her father’s union work inspired her activism.

“Not at all,” said Carter. “My dad is like an anti-activist. He grew up old school. His mindset is, go to work, get your check and go home. Even now he says, ‘Madison, Madison.’ He gets as nervous as my bosses do sometimes. ‘I don’t like that tweet you put out.’ ”

“I have regular meetings with my managers. They are very much like my parents. They believe in me fully, they love the work I am doing, but it is just about 'how do you guide her voice without dampening her spirit?' ”

Her father, who played with former Bills cornerback Jeff Burris at Notre Dame, said Madison was a handful for him and his wife, Renee, to raise.

“That’s my whole refrain with her, ‘bring it back, bring it back,” he said while laughing in a telephone interview. “What you see now is how she has always been. She has always craved attention. She has always craved leadership. Of all our kids, she has always been the mouthpiece of the family. Very opinionated. She kept us accountable as parents, which is great. If she saw any hypocrisy in my life or my wife’s life, she would lose it. She wants everybody to follow the rules. We as parents had to learn how to harness her, not break her.”

“She is very passionate,” he added. “She always defended the helpless. You want her on your team. But she’s tough to handle on your team. If I had a fraction of her passion, I would be in the Hall of Fame. She has a different fire.”

Madison switched her career plans after her younger sister Cameron died at age 14 in 2012 of Type 1 diabetes, a disease that Madison also deals with. Madison was diagnosed at age 3 with blood sugar so high she said medical personnel wouldn’t touch her at the first hospital she was brought for treatment.

“They were terrified, so they sent me to Children’s Hospital,” she explained. “They told my mom if they put me to bed that night, I would not have gotten up the next morning.”

“She is a miracle baby, she shouldn’t be with us,” said her father.

Madison was 16 at the time of her sister’s death, which caused her to reevaluate her life.

“Who has a life reckoning at 16?” asked Madison. “What does Madison want to do with her life? That’s how I pivoted to the path I am on today.”

Her original dream of becoming a lawyer or a judge changed to becoming a journalist.

“I wanted something different,” she said. “Here’s the joke: I wanted some glamour in my life. I wanted a hair and a makeup team. You and I both know there is no such thing. Not here.”

Her first broadcasting job after graduation from Syracuse was in Charlottesville, Va., “an amazing, small starter market.”

She was at a National Association of Black Journalists Conference in New Orleans during the first night of the white supremacists’ Unite the Right rally in August of 2017 but returned to report on the aftermath.

“The biggest takeaway dealing with that is, as a black woman, I don’t think you realize how afraid you are of a racist until you have to stand in front of them with a camera,” she said. “I’ll never forget, no one around, watching how my hand was shaking holding up my camera to this man." Carter said she thought to herseld: "You said you don’t like people like me so are you going to hurt me?”

She said the coverage taught her how to deal with tense situations.

“I think it prepared me for what we saw here a couple of weeks ago,” she said of her 75-minute live shot.

Carter said she chose to come to Buffalo over a more lucrative job offer in Savannah, Ga., even though she the offer from Channel 7 was for a multimedia journalist with the possibility of becoming an anchor.

Why Buffalo then?

“Ashley Rowe and Charlie Specht,” she said without hesitation.

She felt she could learn more about investigative reporting from the award-winning Specht.

“I have an opportunity to learn some skills that nobody will teach me on my own. Maybe I can sit under Charlie, maybe I can learn.”

She met Rowe at her Channel 7 interview.

“She was one of the coolest people I’ve met in my life. She just exudes class and grace and as an anchor and a leader, just watching how respected she was, I thought I want to learn that, too.”

“I want to be an investigator, I want to be an anchor and I want to be a newsroom leader,” she explained. “So let me go to a place where I can grow as a person and a reporter and this job gave me an opportunity to do that.”

Specht, meanwhile, says he has learned from Carter.

“She’s really been grinding behind the scenes for a long time,” Specht said. “Her hard work is paying off. But she’s also really helped white reporters like me realize how blind we are in so many ways to the problems facing people of color in Buffalo – and why it should matter to everyone.”

Channel 7 Assistant News Director Aaron Mason concurs.

“She’s a very hard worker, well sourced and extremely passionate about giving a voice to minority communities (black, brown, LGBTQ),” wrote Mason. “Her perspective as a woman of color is invaluable and makes our newsroom stronger.”

Carter made it a mission to meet community leaders, including police officers, when she arrived to develop sources.

She has had a recurring conversation with Common Council President Darius Pridgen over her anchor advancements.

After being named weekend anchor, Carter said Pridgen told her, “that’s what they (stations) always do, they put the black people on weekends. Talk to me when you get Monday through Friday.”

After being named the noon anchor Monday through Friday, she said Pridgen told her, “talk to me when you get a main slot.”

Of course, African American anchors rarely get weeknight slots in Buffalo. Her solution?

“Give people of color opportunities to advance,” said Carter. “When anchor slots open, don’t hire the white blonde like we always do; allow opportunity to grow into that position ... When those jobs open, groom someone for the position when it is time.”

She prides herself as being outspoken on issues of what is right and wrong that she says black people have been “so afraid to say.”

“It has always been a spoken and unspoken rule, ‘no, you don’t get to talk about race, that’s bad, no, no and no.’ People are scared to because they don’t want their bosses to resent them or their peers even are tired of hearing about race.

“I am in a position, if I have this job, I am a black woman and, if I don’t, I’m still going to be a black woman. The worst that can happen is you can fire me. So I am going to say exactly what I need to say anytime I need to say it.”

She has a simple message for critics who consider her more of an activist than a reporter: “I have a responsibility that I take very seriously … to represent a voice that has largely gone unrepresented in this community. I think the TV stations have a lot of reparations to make to the black community. So when they say I am an activist, am I an activist or am I doing what has never been done in this community before?”

email: apergament@buffnews.com